PROTESTERS will accuse Tony Blair of treason today to highlight the perceived threat to British sovereignty posed by the forthcoming European Union summit in Nice.

A "notice of treason" - naming Mr Blair, Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, the Home Secretary, and Lord Williams of Mostyn, the Attorney-General - is to be handed in at courts across the country. Campaigners say that by the end of the week they will have submitted at least 500 notices laying information under Section One of the Treason Act 1795 and Section 3 of the Treason Felony Act 1848.

A group calling itself Sanity - Subjects Against the Nice Treaty - says ministers are preparing to give up national control over justice and home affairs matters. While the Government is adamant that decisions over foreign policy, defence, taxation and borders should remain subject to the veto, they have been more equivocal over these two areas.

In a recent letter to Christopher Gill, Tory MP for Ludlow, Charles Clarke, Home Office Minister, said: "The Government has not said it will accept qualified majority voting for justice and home affairs issues. We have said that we shall judge each case on its merits. Where QMV is in Britain's interests, we will accept it. Where not, we will not."

This falls short of the unambiguous pledges given by ministers to retain the veto in other areas. Euro-sceptics believe that a move to majority voting in justice and home affairs will result in the adoption of a common legal framework known as corpus juris and the extension of the powers of the EU police body, Europol.Related Articles

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In his letter, Mr Clarke said that none of the corpus juris recommendations had been formally proposed and Britain believed that the legal changes they would involve were outside the competence of the EU.

But a spokesman for Sanity said: "If justice and home affairs pass into the EU's control, then the EU's corpus juris project will ultimately be adopted by majority voting. They will abolish the British right to trial by jury and will make all British subjects and others in the UK subject to arrest and incarceration by a European public prosecutor and a so-called "judge of freedoms" with no public hearing nor obligation on the prosecution to exhibit any evidence for as long as they choose."

He added: "The EU will also acquire the power to decide to expand the strength and scope of Europol, equip and train it with paramilitary weapons and send it where it chooses."